[>9o]
rue de la Verrerie, near the corner of the rue des Archives. The crowd of women shopping at the ground-floor counters was already dense.
He turned left along the rue de la Verrerie, followed the rue du Renard and the rue du Cloitre-Saint-Merri, and approached the rue Taillepain on the side where it ends at the church.
During this walk the idea of his beard worried him a little. " I must be horribly easy to recognise." He wondered for a moment whether he should not have it shaved off. In general, among all the precautions which he had taken, he had paid too little attention hitherto to the question of his appearance. Leheudry had not thought about it either.
Quinette recalled something that Leheudry had said to him that first evening : " You're not a Jew, are you ? . . . because of your beard." Especially in this neighbourhood it was by passing himself off as a Jew from the rue des ficouffes that he would attract the least notice. " But I am too tidy. I need an old overcoat." Then he made up his mind to think that he was an elderly Jew, who had got on in the world, which would explain the good appearance of his clothes ; a money-lender, for example ; or even that he was a Jew from another neighbourhood — a watch-maker, a jeweller - who was bringing some work to a co-religionist.
Under the influence of this idea, he drew in his nostrils, in order to accentuate the curve of his nose. He hunched his shoulders. He dragged his feet a little as he walked, with his legs sagging and his toes turned out. He tried to invest his face with a furtive, ingratiating, cunning expression. This exercise interested him very much. He found both difficulty and pleasure in it.
A man was coming in his direction. Quinette slackened his pace, in order to give the man time to leave the street before he reached the house where Leheudry was staying. When he reached it, he looked back at the two square posts which marked the entrance from the rue Taillepain, Nobody* He glided rapidly into the passage.